Return to Tomorrow (episode)
Three survivors from a race that died half a million years ago "borrow" the bodies of Enterprise crew members so they can build android bodies for themselves. Summary Teaser The ''Enterprise'' is traveling through space, in a region of space hundreds of light years further than any Earth starship has explored. A great, ineffable intelligence has activated her distress signal relays, giving her strong readings yet remaining invisible to her sensors. The crew arrive at a destroyed Class M planet - much older than Earth, Spock determines, and long dead, its atmosphere ripped away by some cataclysmic event 500, 000 years ago. A male voice suddenly speaks, referring to the ship's crew as his "children" and asking them to come into orbit. He admits the unpromising state of his planet, and says strangely that he too is dead : and Death will be the fate of Mankind too, should they choose not to visit. Act one In his Captain's log (Stardate 4768.3 - see below), Kirk states his intention to risk contact; Uhura tells him the entry will not reach Starfleet for three weeks. Spock's science station probes touch the mysterious planetary speaker, named Sargon, who feeds him the transporter coordinates to a chamber more than a hundred miles beneath the surface. In that deep fastness Spock detects a serviceable atmosphere and presumes that a landing party should fare well enough. Kirk plans to leave him in command, saying that with this many unknowns "we can't risk both of us being off of the ship." But Sargon makes his preferences plain by cutting the ships's power until Spock is added to the guest list. In the transporter room Dr McCoy, redshirts Lemli and Leslie, and Lt Commander Mulhall have reported for beam-down. Mulhall, an astrobiologist seconded to the Operations division is unknown to Kirk; it turns out that her orders to join the landing party came from Sargon himself. McCoy is apoplectic when he hears Spock's revised approximation of the thickness of solid rock through which the party is to be transported : 112.37 miles! When the party leaves the ship, the two redshirts' transporter pads fail to energise - another of Sargon's surprises. Underground, in a sort of holding area, Spock finds that the walls date from the time of the cataclysm, and are made from the strongest, hardest material he has ever come across. Mulhall finds the atmosphere only slightly different from that aboard ship. The chamber opens and the unguarded party enter to discover Sargon - energy without substance, matter without form - housed in a glowing spheroid shell. He gives his guests a little history lesson : 6000 centuries ago, the humanoids of this planet were space-farers. They colonised throughout the galaxy. The heroes of a human creation myth were perhaps inspired by two of Sargon's race. But 1000 centuries after the colonial heyday came the ultimate conflict. Possessed of minds "infinitely greater" than the landing party's, having goals beyond their comprehension, Sargon's race fought a superwar, unleashing powers to which even nuclear war pales in comparison. And so the masters of the galaxy all but exterminated themselves, and their homeworld for half a million years has lain dead. Calling Kirk his "son", Sargon exchanges places with him, taking the Captain's body from him and storing his mute mind within the sphere. Sargon thrills to have a corporeal form again. Act Two Act Three Act Four Log entries *''Captain’s log, stardate 4768.3. The Enterprise is in orbit above a planet whose surface, our sensors tell us, is devoid of all life, a world destroyed and dead for at least a half a million years, yet from it comes a voice, the energy of pure thought, telling us something has survived here for those thousands of centuries. Since exploration and contact with alien intelligence is our primary mission, I've decided to risk the potential dangers and resume contact. Log entry out. '' *''Enterprise medical log, stardate 4769.1. Three alien minds now inhabit the bodies of Captain Kirk, Science Officer Spock, and Dr. Ann Mulhall. As planned, the construction of android robots is underway. All is proceeding as expected ... and as promised. I can find no reason for concern, but yet I am filled with foreboding. '' *''Medical log, Stardate 4770.3. Do I list one death or two? When Kirk's body died, Sargon was too far distant from his receptacle to transfer back. Sargon is dead. But is Captain Kirk dead? His body is, but his consciousness is still in the receptacle into which it was transferred earlier. '' Memorable Quotes "Risk. Risk is our business. That's what this starship is all about. That's why we're aboard her." : - Kirk "Let's get back to this solid rock business." : - McCoy "Oblivion together does not frighten me, beloved." : - Thalassa Background Information * In many parts of this episode, there are a few scenes where the lightbulbs inside the cannisters are fairly obvious. * One of the fiberglass globes later was re-used as part of the Romulan cloaking device in "The Enterprise Incident" and for M-4 in "Requiem for Methuselah". * The stand for one of the globes would later be turned upside-down and be a piece of technology on Mr. Atoz's desk in "All Our Yesterdays". * In a clip from the second season blooper reel, the actor playing the android peels off his latex coating, while a voice (perhaps Fred Phillips) says, "Well, son, you wanted show business– G– dammit, you got it!" The actor playing the android appears to be regular extra Bill Blackburn. Another clip shows William Shatner grasping one of the globes and proclaiming, "Have no fear: Sargon is here." Yet another blooper shows Messrs. Shatner and Kelley cracking up and unable to say their lines when Diana Muldaur comes into the frame. * "Dr. Ann Mulhall, Astro-Biology" should be wearing a blue science uniform not a red engineering one, and why doesn't Kirk know who she is? She's a Lieutenant Commander which makes her a senior officer. * This episode is the latest in any season to feature a completely new score, this one by George Duning. By the halfway point in each season, scores were generally completed using stock music from previous episodes, with occasional snippets of new music added here and there. * This was George Takei's return to the series after an absence of some months filming The Green Berets. * As in "Tomorrow is Yesterday", Star Trek again references the Apollo moon landing, which was still more than a year away when this episode was filmed. However, Captain Kirk's wording is inaccurate; he rhetorically asks his crew, "Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn't reached the Moon…?" Neither the first Apollo mission (Apollo 1) nor the next four Apollo manned and unmanned missions (Apollo 4, 5, 6, and 7) actually reached the Moon. The second Apollo manned mission to launch (Apollo 8) was the first to actually reach the Moon's orbit, and fifth Apollo manned mission to launch (Apollo 11) was the famous moon landing. Apollos 1 and 4 were already in the books by the time this episode was filmed, so the writers would have known that neither reached the moon. However, Kirk could have euphemistically been referring to the fifth insofar as being the first successful landing on an alien surface. *Dr. Ann Mulhall is played by Diana Muldaur, who later played the roles of Miranda Jones in "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" and Katherine Pulaski in Star Trek: The Next Generation * James Doohan was the voice of Sargon. Production timeline * Story outline: * Second revised final script: , filmed late November. Links and References VHS edition available through Amazon under ISBN 6300213552 Main cast * William Shatner as Kirk * Leonard Nimoy as Spock * DeForest Kelley as McCoy * James Doohan as Scott * George Takei as Sulu * Nichelle Nichols as Uhura * Majel Barrett as Chapel Guest Stars * Diana Muldaur as Dr. Ann Mulhall * James Doohan as Sargon (voice) * Cindy Lou as Nurse * Eddie Paskey as Leslie (uncredited) * William Blackburn as Hadley and android body (uncredited) * Frank da Vinci as Brent (uncredited) * Roger Holloway as Roger Lemli (uncredited) References Arret; class M; Henoch; negatron hydrocoil; nitrogen; oxygen; Sargon; Thalassa External Links * |next= |lastair= |nextair= |lastair_remastered= |nextair_remastered= }} Category:TOS episodes de:Geist sucht Körper es:Return to Tomorrow fr:Return to Tomorrow nl:Return to Tomorrow